Thursday, June 20, 2013
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
One day at a time...
One day at a time. Yep. I keep telling myself it is all about the payoff, and half of the enjoyment is the time spent doing the job and doing it right! I must avoid the tendency to want it too soon, as that will lead to agony...
I have finally finished stripping all the original wiring from the relays and the junction strips. A repetitious job, to be sure, but it has to be done.
My biggest concern is getting new pipework.
I cannot afford it myself, without significant cashing in of investments, and I do not wish to deplete my reserves in case I live longer than I expect!
Let me outline it.
The Tibia Clausa. That is a fundamental rank of a theatre organ. The Baker Grand organ boasts a Tibia that they called the "Muted Horn". It is a wooden rank of pipes, with the exception of the highest 20 notes, which are open metal ones. Robert-Morton apparently made a FINE "Muted Horn", and is very desirable. In fact, several people that have been giving me some advice on all this have expressed a desire to purchase the rank! The Tibia encompasses 97 pipes. Of these pipes, ALL of the upper metal ones are gone, and will have to be made.
The Diapason is an open metal pipe rank. It was heavily damaged or removed. Out of the 73 pipes, close to 45 are needed, most of which are the upper range.
The violins didn't fare well, either. Robert-Morton made some BEAUTIFUL violins, extremely imitative of the orchestrial violin. Out of 85 pipes, about 50 are needed.
And lastly, the vox humana. It was ravaged, too. Out of 73 pipes, 40 are needed.
That is a LOT of damaged or missing pipework!
I just refuse to think that enough money cannot be raised to replace the needed pipes.
I am checking-every day- two sites on the web that are "clearinghouses" for theatre organ pipes and parts. Original pipework DOES surface evry once in a while. Prior to my looking for the parts, there was a set of violins (Morton), and a set of Morton vox humanas. The complete vox humana was going for $250!! All in good condition. I was too late- they had been sold.
Now, compare the price of a used, original set of violins at $600, to a set of NEW violins for $6,000.
The thought is staggering!
I won't but a used set of Wurlitzer or Moeller. I want Robert-Morton parts for a Robert-Morton organ.
There IS a difference in sound.
As an example, go to this website, scroll down and play the sound files for the various organ families. He has examples of Morton and Wurlitzer.
http://www.atos.org/about/instruments
So, keep your fingers crossed that the needed pipework comes up for sale. I have a year or two...no big rush! (right....)
I have finally finished stripping all the original wiring from the relays and the junction strips. A repetitious job, to be sure, but it has to be done.
My biggest concern is getting new pipework.
I cannot afford it myself, without significant cashing in of investments, and I do not wish to deplete my reserves in case I live longer than I expect!
Let me outline it.
The Tibia Clausa. That is a fundamental rank of a theatre organ. The Baker Grand organ boasts a Tibia that they called the "Muted Horn". It is a wooden rank of pipes, with the exception of the highest 20 notes, which are open metal ones. Robert-Morton apparently made a FINE "Muted Horn", and is very desirable. In fact, several people that have been giving me some advice on all this have expressed a desire to purchase the rank! The Tibia encompasses 97 pipes. Of these pipes, ALL of the upper metal ones are gone, and will have to be made.
The Diapason is an open metal pipe rank. It was heavily damaged or removed. Out of the 73 pipes, close to 45 are needed, most of which are the upper range.
The violins didn't fare well, either. Robert-Morton made some BEAUTIFUL violins, extremely imitative of the orchestrial violin. Out of 85 pipes, about 50 are needed.
And lastly, the vox humana. It was ravaged, too. Out of 73 pipes, 40 are needed.
That is a LOT of damaged or missing pipework!
I just refuse to think that enough money cannot be raised to replace the needed pipes.
I am checking-every day- two sites on the web that are "clearinghouses" for theatre organ pipes and parts. Original pipework DOES surface evry once in a while. Prior to my looking for the parts, there was a set of violins (Morton), and a set of Morton vox humanas. The complete vox humana was going for $250!! All in good condition. I was too late- they had been sold.
Now, compare the price of a used, original set of violins at $600, to a set of NEW violins for $6,000.
The thought is staggering!
I won't but a used set of Wurlitzer or Moeller. I want Robert-Morton parts for a Robert-Morton organ.
There IS a difference in sound.
As an example, go to this website, scroll down and play the sound files for the various organ families. He has examples of Morton and Wurlitzer.
http://www.atos.org/about/instruments
So, keep your fingers crossed that the needed pipework comes up for sale. I have a year or two...no big rush! (right....)
Monday, June 17, 2013
Yeah, but what do I plan on doing with it?!
I have had a lot of people give opinions and advice on what should become of the organ. Some ideas are quite good, others interesting while still others are just not do-able.
LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR to any reader of this.
The organ NEEDS to stay here in Natchez. It is classified as an Historic Instrument, since it is all in its original state ( no alterations to any of the instrument, such as adding more ranks, or a new console), and is still in the town where it was installed, originally.
The organ NEEDS to be housed in a good environment, what could be classified as a "livable" environment. Controlled temperatures and humidity.Clean.
The organ NEEDS to be played for the enjoyment of ALL, whether that be citizens of Natchez or visitors.
I have spoken with the Historic Natchez Foundation folk. They are just as happy as can be that something from the Baker Grand has survived. They express interest. But, it stops there. They would like it, but they are concerned over how much space it would require.
In talking with a local architect, he tells me that the organ could be fitted into the City Auditorium. A little remodeling done, and there you have it.
So, here are the suggestions I have gotten:
The NAPAC Museum
The City auditorium
The theatre down at the Visitors Center
The Martin Performing Arts Center
The Ritz theatre ( impossible- it is just a shell: no roof)
The Clark Theatre ( someone already owns it, and it, too, is in bad shape)
Build a structure to house it and put on concerts
and a few others
Right now, my ONLY recourse is to install it inside my shop, and just quit woodworking while it is there. My shop doesn't have a/c climate control. It doesn't need to be in there, but my choices are few.
I DO plan on making the organ MOBILE. That is, all the cables would have connectors that would allow for disconnecting components and MOVING the organ to another location. It is primarily pipe chests,a xylophone, a harp, a set of chimes, a large reservoir/regulator, a smaller regulator, a couple of tremolo units, the console and the blower. Then you have the swell shades, and I am working on how to structure a transportable enclosure which the shutters would be mounted in.
BUT, IT NEEDS A GOOD HOME. A public home.
Any ideas or millionaire benefactors would certainly be welcome!
LET ME MAKE THIS CLEAR to any reader of this.
The organ NEEDS to stay here in Natchez. It is classified as an Historic Instrument, since it is all in its original state ( no alterations to any of the instrument, such as adding more ranks, or a new console), and is still in the town where it was installed, originally.
The organ NEEDS to be housed in a good environment, what could be classified as a "livable" environment. Controlled temperatures and humidity.Clean.
The organ NEEDS to be played for the enjoyment of ALL, whether that be citizens of Natchez or visitors.
I have spoken with the Historic Natchez Foundation folk. They are just as happy as can be that something from the Baker Grand has survived. They express interest. But, it stops there. They would like it, but they are concerned over how much space it would require.
In talking with a local architect, he tells me that the organ could be fitted into the City Auditorium. A little remodeling done, and there you have it.
So, here are the suggestions I have gotten:
The NAPAC Museum
The City auditorium
The theatre down at the Visitors Center
The Martin Performing Arts Center
The Ritz theatre ( impossible- it is just a shell: no roof)
The Clark Theatre ( someone already owns it, and it, too, is in bad shape)
Build a structure to house it and put on concerts
and a few others
Right now, my ONLY recourse is to install it inside my shop, and just quit woodworking while it is there. My shop doesn't have a/c climate control. It doesn't need to be in there, but my choices are few.
I DO plan on making the organ MOBILE. That is, all the cables would have connectors that would allow for disconnecting components and MOVING the organ to another location. It is primarily pipe chests,a xylophone, a harp, a set of chimes, a large reservoir/regulator, a smaller regulator, a couple of tremolo units, the console and the blower. Then you have the swell shades, and I am working on how to structure a transportable enclosure which the shutters would be mounted in.
BUT, IT NEEDS A GOOD HOME. A public home.
Any ideas or millionaire benefactors would certainly be welcome!
Why am I DOING THIS??!!
I woke up early this morning, and just laid in bed. The dog had appeared at some time during the night, and as par for the course, she decides that I am intruding upon HER bed space. That means, she has the most territory, while I am confined to Rhode Island.
I look at all the parts and pipes and wiring, and I wonder just why am I doing this? This is insane! I have no experience in restoring a theatre organ! Run away while I still can!
Bah!
There is something in my make-up that just can't resist mechanical gadgets. Mechanical MUSICAL gadgets makes it even more appealing.
For a number of years I have worked on pianos. The tuning side of piano work was not my initial interest, it was the mechanism- the action! All the parts! And the piano case itself, what with the chunk of cast iron, all the strings, the sounding board. All of that interested me, especially the prospect of taking something that was in bad shape and returning it to its original condition. Or close to it.
It wasn't long before I gravitated to player pianos.
My grandmother-on my father's side- had an old "Meister" brand upright player piano, and when she died, the piano came to our house. It was a BIG thing, and heavy! ( Why is it that everything that interests me is big and heavy?)My father had decided that we would try to get the player working again, and he acquired some small diameter tubing to replace broken pieces.
Dad didn't live much longer. His heart was not good, and I can remember as a child seeing a bottle of nitro glycerin up on a shelf in the kitchen, and wondering why we had explosives in our house! My father's adoptive mother died in September of 1972, and my dad just cried and cried. She had been in a private nursing home over on Pine Street for a year or so, and had had a series of strokes. Dad was tremendously devastated by the loss, and he was also plagued by his inability to discover who his real parents were. He had been consumed for a while trying to find out his birth family, and his adoptive mother-whom he loved dearly- was not any help. Now with her being gone, the task seemed more daunting.
The stress of the loss, his inability to find his birth parents and work just overwhelmed him, and he wound up dying just 2 months later- December 6, 1972.
Enough of that.
Off and on, I would try to make the player work. I would attach the hose from the vacuum cleaner to the player system, and would reverse the flow so it would produce pressure, i.e., blow air. Nothing. In all the times of tinkering with the old thing I could never get the player system to do a thing. It just sat there, defiant.
When I was reaching the point of high school graduation, my mother offered to buy me a NEW piano, and so we traded the piano in at Heard Music Co., and got the piano I still have today- a Baldwin spinet. (It still serves me well, and has seen a lot of use!)
Years later, when faced with the prospect of acquiring an old player piano, I jumped at it, remembering my grandmother's old piano.
This time, I found BOOK that was devoted to restoring player pianos, and with a little time and investment in supplies, I did it!
And it was at this time that I discovered my fatal flaw concerning my grandmother's piano. I had tried so hard to get hers to work by blowing air in through the inlets for the action.
I had no idea, until this point, that the system operated off of SUCTION, not PRESSURE. RATS.
To this day, I wish I had my grandmother's old player piano, 'cause now I could fix it!
Through the years I have done a number of old players, each with different player actions. Amphion, Gulbransen, H.C. Bay, Kimball, Baldwin, Standard, Aeolian, Starr, Steck, Jacob Doll,Wurlitzer,Straube, and a couple of others that I could not identify. They were always fun, challenging and rewarding.
The restoration techniques took me into the realm of reed organs. Those are neat, and in comparison to a player piano's action, very simple. I still do reed organs, and wish I had one of my own.
Then, not satisfied with what I had done, I built a replica of a Wurlitzer 105 Band Organ. A band organ is kind of like a hybrid between a player piano and an organ. Half of the instrument operates off of suction, the other half from pressure. It operates off of a music roll, and the roll activates little fingers to push down on the organ "keys" . It is this part that operates off of suction.
When the keys are pushed down, air pressure is admitted to a corresponding pipe, or pipes, and music is heard. There are 97 pipes inside the organ, broken down into cello, violin, piccolo, flageolet, trumpet and flute. Much like a pipe organ, you can control how many ranks of pipes you want to play. The instrument also has a snare drum and a bass drum, both played off the music roll.
All of this building and restoring gave me the confidence to face this new challenge.
Except for the wiring, there is nothing involved in the restoration that is a puzzler or really beyond what I have already experienced. Well, okay...the metal pipes...I have zero experience with them, but hey! You gotta start somewhere.
I am facing this project with high hopes! I know what it is supposed to do. I know what it is going to sound like.
ONWARD!!!!!
I look at all the parts and pipes and wiring, and I wonder just why am I doing this? This is insane! I have no experience in restoring a theatre organ! Run away while I still can!
Bah!
There is something in my make-up that just can't resist mechanical gadgets. Mechanical MUSICAL gadgets makes it even more appealing.
For a number of years I have worked on pianos. The tuning side of piano work was not my initial interest, it was the mechanism- the action! All the parts! And the piano case itself, what with the chunk of cast iron, all the strings, the sounding board. All of that interested me, especially the prospect of taking something that was in bad shape and returning it to its original condition. Or close to it.
It wasn't long before I gravitated to player pianos.
My grandmother-on my father's side- had an old "Meister" brand upright player piano, and when she died, the piano came to our house. It was a BIG thing, and heavy! ( Why is it that everything that interests me is big and heavy?)My father had decided that we would try to get the player working again, and he acquired some small diameter tubing to replace broken pieces.
Dad didn't live much longer. His heart was not good, and I can remember as a child seeing a bottle of nitro glycerin up on a shelf in the kitchen, and wondering why we had explosives in our house! My father's adoptive mother died in September of 1972, and my dad just cried and cried. She had been in a private nursing home over on Pine Street for a year or so, and had had a series of strokes. Dad was tremendously devastated by the loss, and he was also plagued by his inability to discover who his real parents were. He had been consumed for a while trying to find out his birth family, and his adoptive mother-whom he loved dearly- was not any help. Now with her being gone, the task seemed more daunting.
The stress of the loss, his inability to find his birth parents and work just overwhelmed him, and he wound up dying just 2 months later- December 6, 1972.
Enough of that.
Off and on, I would try to make the player work. I would attach the hose from the vacuum cleaner to the player system, and would reverse the flow so it would produce pressure, i.e., blow air. Nothing. In all the times of tinkering with the old thing I could never get the player system to do a thing. It just sat there, defiant.
When I was reaching the point of high school graduation, my mother offered to buy me a NEW piano, and so we traded the piano in at Heard Music Co., and got the piano I still have today- a Baldwin spinet. (It still serves me well, and has seen a lot of use!)
Years later, when faced with the prospect of acquiring an old player piano, I jumped at it, remembering my grandmother's old piano.
This time, I found BOOK that was devoted to restoring player pianos, and with a little time and investment in supplies, I did it!
And it was at this time that I discovered my fatal flaw concerning my grandmother's piano. I had tried so hard to get hers to work by blowing air in through the inlets for the action.
I had no idea, until this point, that the system operated off of SUCTION, not PRESSURE. RATS.
To this day, I wish I had my grandmother's old player piano, 'cause now I could fix it!
Through the years I have done a number of old players, each with different player actions. Amphion, Gulbransen, H.C. Bay, Kimball, Baldwin, Standard, Aeolian, Starr, Steck, Jacob Doll,Wurlitzer,Straube, and a couple of others that I could not identify. They were always fun, challenging and rewarding.
The restoration techniques took me into the realm of reed organs. Those are neat, and in comparison to a player piano's action, very simple. I still do reed organs, and wish I had one of my own.
Then, not satisfied with what I had done, I built a replica of a Wurlitzer 105 Band Organ. A band organ is kind of like a hybrid between a player piano and an organ. Half of the instrument operates off of suction, the other half from pressure. It operates off of a music roll, and the roll activates little fingers to push down on the organ "keys" . It is this part that operates off of suction.
When the keys are pushed down, air pressure is admitted to a corresponding pipe, or pipes, and music is heard. There are 97 pipes inside the organ, broken down into cello, violin, piccolo, flageolet, trumpet and flute. Much like a pipe organ, you can control how many ranks of pipes you want to play. The instrument also has a snare drum and a bass drum, both played off the music roll.
All of this building and restoring gave me the confidence to face this new challenge.
Except for the wiring, there is nothing involved in the restoration that is a puzzler or really beyond what I have already experienced. Well, okay...the metal pipes...I have zero experience with them, but hey! You gotta start somewhere.
I am facing this project with high hopes! I know what it is supposed to do. I know what it is going to sound like.
ONWARD!!!!!
Sunday, June 16, 2013
What is there to restore?
You might wonder: just what IS there to restore? Can't you just hook it all back up and play?
Wishful thinking. Very wishful.
As mentioned before, this organ is an electro-pneumatic organ. Part of it is electric, the other, pneumatic.
So what has to go?
Basically, EVERYTHING!
The pipe chests have inside them valves , pouches and armatures. All rotten, because they are leather, except the facings on the armatures: that is blotter paper. It all rots with age, and starts flaking and falling apart. Components lose the air-tightness that is so necessary.
It is a LOT of leather, and not just ANY leather. You have several types inside the action. Pouch leather, valve leather and gasket leather. Each has different qualities and thicknesses.
Each STOPPERED wooden pipe has to have the felt and leather on its stoppers replaced. And replaced CORRECTLY. The stopper has to exhibit several qualities: it MUST seal completely against the inside walls of the pipe, or the pipe WILL NOT speak correctly. The stopper -even though it must fit snuggly inside the pipe- must still be free enough to be moved slightly up or down inside the length of the pipe so as to tune the pipe. Each stopper has a handle, much like a toilet-plunger handle. To make the pitch of the pipe HIGHER, you push the stopper IN. To make the pitch LOWER, you pull the stopper OUT.
More leather is used on the large bellows which move the shutters. Leather on the pneumatics inside the blow boxes. Leather and felt are everywhere. And it is rotten.
Then there is the electrical wiring. The organ has a rectifier which transform the 110 volts ac power into 12 volts DC power. MILES of 26 guage ( really SMALL) wiring runs all over the place in the console, it goes through the relays and out to the pipe chests. And it must go, not that it is bad, but because the original insulation was cloth. Cloth is not allowable anymore, even if it IS just 12 voltsdc.
Okay, skins and skins of leather, yards of special felt, miles of wiring...
Each wooden pipe was finished with orange shellac. It is flaking off. The old must be scraped and sanded off, and new orange shellac applied.
It is a MASSIVE job to do a thorough restoration.
I am EAGERLY waiting to really get to it!
Wishful thinking. Very wishful.
As mentioned before, this organ is an electro-pneumatic organ. Part of it is electric, the other, pneumatic.
So what has to go?
Basically, EVERYTHING!
The pipe chests have inside them valves , pouches and armatures. All rotten, because they are leather, except the facings on the armatures: that is blotter paper. It all rots with age, and starts flaking and falling apart. Components lose the air-tightness that is so necessary.
It is a LOT of leather, and not just ANY leather. You have several types inside the action. Pouch leather, valve leather and gasket leather. Each has different qualities and thicknesses.
Each STOPPERED wooden pipe has to have the felt and leather on its stoppers replaced. And replaced CORRECTLY. The stopper has to exhibit several qualities: it MUST seal completely against the inside walls of the pipe, or the pipe WILL NOT speak correctly. The stopper -even though it must fit snuggly inside the pipe- must still be free enough to be moved slightly up or down inside the length of the pipe so as to tune the pipe. Each stopper has a handle, much like a toilet-plunger handle. To make the pitch of the pipe HIGHER, you push the stopper IN. To make the pitch LOWER, you pull the stopper OUT.
More leather is used on the large bellows which move the shutters. Leather on the pneumatics inside the blow boxes. Leather and felt are everywhere. And it is rotten.
Then there is the electrical wiring. The organ has a rectifier which transform the 110 volts ac power into 12 volts DC power. MILES of 26 guage ( really SMALL) wiring runs all over the place in the console, it goes through the relays and out to the pipe chests. And it must go, not that it is bad, but because the original insulation was cloth. Cloth is not allowable anymore, even if it IS just 12 voltsdc.
Okay, skins and skins of leather, yards of special felt, miles of wiring...
Each wooden pipe was finished with orange shellac. It is flaking off. The old must be scraped and sanded off, and new orange shellac applied.
It is a MASSIVE job to do a thorough restoration.
I am EAGERLY waiting to really get to it!
A little more
Moving something of this magnitude is a LOT OF WORK!
So far, the ones who have helped in some way have been my brother, John Cook; Josh and Ross Smith (Stan Smith's sons); Walker, Sawyer and Braxton Allen ( children of Kristy and Leon Atkins); and Semmes White.
I remember well the first time I saw it. The organ was inside a storage "pod": an aluminum trailer, of sorts, about 8 feet wide, 7 feet tall and probably 35 feet long. The Shumway family had been using it for storage=of course-, and the organ took up the back half of the pod.
Peering around some items that they had not moved yet, I could see it! The pipes were orderly arranged, all the longer ones lying on their sides. The wooden ones were stacked on top of each other, and -supported by two by fours running across the width of the pod- were the longer metal pipes and the wooden shutters, wind ductwork, and framing pieces. Then there were some cardboard boxes in which there were smaller wooden pipes and the remaining smaller metal pipes, some of them damaged way beyond repair.
But where was the console?! It was all the way to the back of the pod. In front of it was the mammoth blower, the xylophone, the impressively heavy harp and several dice boxes(?) (more on that later).
Even after removing some of the pipes I couldn't really see the console. I am NOT the sized person that can easily balance negotiating through obstacles and wooden pallets. So the Atkin boys were kind enough to help me "see" what was back there.They all helped, at different times because you KNOW that young brothers just can't seem to get along for more than 10 minutes at a time! Walker and Sawyer helped move a few bigger things, and Braxton was the one who really saw the console for the first time. I would ask him questions and he would tell me what he saw. It was quite the scene , as he really didn't know what he was looking at and I was not quite sure, myself!
Finally, I could get at the console.
I remember saying to myself "It's beautiful...beautiful," as I gazed upon the battered thing.
I KNEW that I could bring the console back to life, as far as refinishing. I KNEW it.
So, over the course of several weeks, I slowly got the parts moved.
It was NOT easy. I am ALWAYS at the mercy of helpers, and if none are available at the moment, then I try to find some way I can do without!
One such case came with the biggest of the wooden pipes.
Standing close to 8 feet long, made out of close to 1 inch spruce, and measuring -in cross section- some15 inches by 13 inches, each of those pipes weighed a LOT !!!!! But I was determined to get them, and so I would drag them out of the pod, where then I would bear-hug the pipe and then tilt it over my shoulder to carry the thing! WOW!!!! It was rough!!
The two pieces that were the worse were the console and the blower.
Ross helped me with the console, and as we were moving/dragging it out from the rear, it would creak and crack. Ross would stop shoving and look at me.
"Don't worry", I would say." If it breaks or falls apart, then that is a good thing! I then can glue it back even stronger than before!"
Yeah, it WAS worse than I thought. The organ was 91 years old. Its joints had started to open up, and the case was wobbly. But, again, that worked to my advantage: I knew what HAD to be done to make it stable, again.
The blower. HOLY COW!!! Was that thing a beast!! Semmes and I had originally made a trial run of it, and we both declared it too much for just the two of us. So with a little planning, Semmes, Josh Smith, John and I got together late one afternoon and headed for the pod. It was a struggle of epic proportions. But we got it!
After looking at it at my shop, and doing a little dismantling of it, most of the dead weight was in the MOTOR: an old Westinghouse 3 horsepower, 220 volt, 3 phase motor! The metal fan enclosures were really not that heavy. It was just that it was so awkward to handle, I guess.
I still have a few framing pieces to move, and will get them, soon. But, the heaviest stuff is over with.
My garage shop is slowly getting re-organized. It will take a while.
And even though I swore I wouldn't start on it yet, I have restored several pieces of it. Pictures to come, soon.
So far, the ones who have helped in some way have been my brother, John Cook; Josh and Ross Smith (Stan Smith's sons); Walker, Sawyer and Braxton Allen ( children of Kristy and Leon Atkins); and Semmes White.
I remember well the first time I saw it. The organ was inside a storage "pod": an aluminum trailer, of sorts, about 8 feet wide, 7 feet tall and probably 35 feet long. The Shumway family had been using it for storage=of course-, and the organ took up the back half of the pod.
Peering around some items that they had not moved yet, I could see it! The pipes were orderly arranged, all the longer ones lying on their sides. The wooden ones were stacked on top of each other, and -supported by two by fours running across the width of the pod- were the longer metal pipes and the wooden shutters, wind ductwork, and framing pieces. Then there were some cardboard boxes in which there were smaller wooden pipes and the remaining smaller metal pipes, some of them damaged way beyond repair.
But where was the console?! It was all the way to the back of the pod. In front of it was the mammoth blower, the xylophone, the impressively heavy harp and several dice boxes(?) (more on that later).
Even after removing some of the pipes I couldn't really see the console. I am NOT the sized person that can easily balance negotiating through obstacles and wooden pallets. So the Atkin boys were kind enough to help me "see" what was back there.They all helped, at different times because you KNOW that young brothers just can't seem to get along for more than 10 minutes at a time! Walker and Sawyer helped move a few bigger things, and Braxton was the one who really saw the console for the first time. I would ask him questions and he would tell me what he saw. It was quite the scene , as he really didn't know what he was looking at and I was not quite sure, myself!
Finally, I could get at the console.
I remember saying to myself "It's beautiful...beautiful," as I gazed upon the battered thing.
I KNEW that I could bring the console back to life, as far as refinishing. I KNEW it.
So, over the course of several weeks, I slowly got the parts moved.
It was NOT easy. I am ALWAYS at the mercy of helpers, and if none are available at the moment, then I try to find some way I can do without!
One such case came with the biggest of the wooden pipes.
Standing close to 8 feet long, made out of close to 1 inch spruce, and measuring -in cross section- some15 inches by 13 inches, each of those pipes weighed a LOT !!!!! But I was determined to get them, and so I would drag them out of the pod, where then I would bear-hug the pipe and then tilt it over my shoulder to carry the thing! WOW!!!! It was rough!!
The two pieces that were the worse were the console and the blower.
Ross helped me with the console, and as we were moving/dragging it out from the rear, it would creak and crack. Ross would stop shoving and look at me.
"Don't worry", I would say." If it breaks or falls apart, then that is a good thing! I then can glue it back even stronger than before!"
Yeah, it WAS worse than I thought. The organ was 91 years old. Its joints had started to open up, and the case was wobbly. But, again, that worked to my advantage: I knew what HAD to be done to make it stable, again.
The blower. HOLY COW!!! Was that thing a beast!! Semmes and I had originally made a trial run of it, and we both declared it too much for just the two of us. So with a little planning, Semmes, Josh Smith, John and I got together late one afternoon and headed for the pod. It was a struggle of epic proportions. But we got it!
After looking at it at my shop, and doing a little dismantling of it, most of the dead weight was in the MOTOR: an old Westinghouse 3 horsepower, 220 volt, 3 phase motor! The metal fan enclosures were really not that heavy. It was just that it was so awkward to handle, I guess.
I still have a few framing pieces to move, and will get them, soon. But, the heaviest stuff is over with.
My garage shop is slowly getting re-organized. It will take a while.
And even though I swore I wouldn't start on it yet, I have restored several pieces of it. Pictures to come, soon.
The beginning!
Well, here it is: the OFFICIAL, un-official site for the restoration of the Baker Grand theatre organ!
I am very new to this, and very computer illiterate, so PLEASE be patient!
First, a little history of the organ, and how I have come into owning it.
The organ was built by the Robert-Morton Organ Company, of Van Nuys, California. It is a 2/4 type, with 3 tuned percussions.
What? Yeah, that's what I thought too when I first starting getting into this, and learning organ parlance. Let's break it down.
The "2" in the 2/4 stands for 2 manuals (manuals, you ask?) Yes, that is the term for the keyboards. There are 2 keyboards, each with a compass of 61 notes.
The "4" designates that it has 4 specific speaking "ranks", or voices. This included the Tibia Clausa, the violin, the diapason and the vox humana.
The 3 tuned percussions include a xylophone, a harp and a set of chimes.
Okay, now we can communicate a little better!
The Baker Grand was originally built as a vaudeville/opera house, for live performances. It seated over 1,000 people, had 2 balconies, a fully equipped stage with fly-space and elevator stage lifts, and box seats on either side of the stage. When movies started edging out live performance, the simply placed a large screen on the stage and put in a projection booth. Of course, at first it was silent movies.
Well, silent movies were never really silent; they always had some type of music to go with the movie, provided live, either by a pianist or a small orchestra.
Several companies started adapting church organs to theatre organs. How? Well, a brilliant inventor named Hope-Jones worked with the Wurlitzer company, and developed the "unit" organ, among other innovations. In his developments, the pressures to play the pipes increased, the pipes were voiced more to imitate that of an orchestra, and the electro-pneumatic system was developed, which enable the organ console(where the organist sits and plays) to be able to be placed almost anywhere, and was connected to the pipes by means of electrical cables.
Wurlitzer had the "lion;s share" of the market, with Robert-Morton being in the second position.
So when the silent movies became popular, the theatre owners had a choice: pay for a group of musicians to play for the film, or pay for one organist to play for the film. The answer was always the one organist.
The Baker Grand went with Robert-Morton, and in 1922 Mr. Roy Gimple- one of the chief installers with the company- installed the 2/4 organ into the Baker Grand.
Silent movies did not last for too long: as soon as the tecgnology existed to put sound and music onto the film, well...there was little use for musical accompaniment. Many of the fine organs feel into silence and neglect, and those that were not dismantled and removed were just left in place and forgotten.
Such was the case of the Baker Grand organ. It remained sitting front-and-center in the orchestra pit at the front of the stage, a mute testament to days gone by and its glory days. During these years of neglect, the pipe chambers were subject to prying individuals, who would sometimes remove one of the smaller, slender metal pipes. I mean, isn't that just the sort of thing that would be appealing to kids let out of stir? These metal rods that could be used for sword fighting, and in calmer moments could be blown into for musical toots!
Because of this, a goodly amount of the smaller metal pipes were removed and lost, and a lot of the remaining ones were badly damaged.
And to add to the insult, the old girl was subjected to having some parts removed from her so that a similar organ down in Baton Rouge could be repaired. The B.G. owner was friendly with the party in Baton Rouge, and- because the organ here was already in bad shape- the out-of-towners were allowed to do the scavenging.
I have no idea what they took. That act took place in about '72. The one who removed the items died just 4 days after I started moving and inquiring about the organ.
The Baker Grand was destined to meet the wrecking ball in '74. Louis Spencer had the salvage and demolition rights. Spencer contacted Mr Bob Shumway to inform him that the building was to be torn down, and that if he wanted the organ, he could have it for a price. Mr Shumway would not meet the price, due to the fact that the organ was in bad shape and was missing a lot of its pipework.I believe Mr Spencer said that he had been "told" that the organ was worth thousands of dollars, and that's what he was looking for, as owner of the salvage rights.
Not able to strike the deal, that was the end of that.
Until about 3 days before the wrecking ball was to swing. Mr Shumway got a call from Mr Spencer saying that if he wanted the organ, to come get it. The price had dropped substantially. And Shumway was interested.
So Mr Shumway made some fast calls, secured a large, long cargo trailer, got his 14 year old son and the 2 employees from his shop and were at the theatre the next day. I believe they started at 8 in the morning and did not get through until 3 the next morning, literally beating the demolition team by about 5 hours.
And so, the organ was put away into storage. Mr Shumway had always wanted to restore the organ, and envisioned building a house that would display it. But time caught up to him-as it does to us all- and his health began to deteriorate, and he never got to put the organ back into working condition.
And so, it sat in storage for 40 years.
Then a few months back, I got a Facebook message from Elwood Black informing me that Ruth Powers-one of the children of Mr Shumway- had posted that if anyone wanted the old Baker Grand organ...COME GET IT!
And so, it has begun.
More stories to come.
I am very new to this, and very computer illiterate, so PLEASE be patient!
First, a little history of the organ, and how I have come into owning it.
The organ was built by the Robert-Morton Organ Company, of Van Nuys, California. It is a 2/4 type, with 3 tuned percussions.
What? Yeah, that's what I thought too when I first starting getting into this, and learning organ parlance. Let's break it down.
The "2" in the 2/4 stands for 2 manuals (manuals, you ask?) Yes, that is the term for the keyboards. There are 2 keyboards, each with a compass of 61 notes.
The "4" designates that it has 4 specific speaking "ranks", or voices. This included the Tibia Clausa, the violin, the diapason and the vox humana.
The 3 tuned percussions include a xylophone, a harp and a set of chimes.
Okay, now we can communicate a little better!
The Baker Grand was originally built as a vaudeville/opera house, for live performances. It seated over 1,000 people, had 2 balconies, a fully equipped stage with fly-space and elevator stage lifts, and box seats on either side of the stage. When movies started edging out live performance, the simply placed a large screen on the stage and put in a projection booth. Of course, at first it was silent movies.
Well, silent movies were never really silent; they always had some type of music to go with the movie, provided live, either by a pianist or a small orchestra.
Several companies started adapting church organs to theatre organs. How? Well, a brilliant inventor named Hope-Jones worked with the Wurlitzer company, and developed the "unit" organ, among other innovations. In his developments, the pressures to play the pipes increased, the pipes were voiced more to imitate that of an orchestra, and the electro-pneumatic system was developed, which enable the organ console(where the organist sits and plays) to be able to be placed almost anywhere, and was connected to the pipes by means of electrical cables.
Wurlitzer had the "lion;s share" of the market, with Robert-Morton being in the second position.
So when the silent movies became popular, the theatre owners had a choice: pay for a group of musicians to play for the film, or pay for one organist to play for the film. The answer was always the one organist.
The Baker Grand went with Robert-Morton, and in 1922 Mr. Roy Gimple- one of the chief installers with the company- installed the 2/4 organ into the Baker Grand.
Silent movies did not last for too long: as soon as the tecgnology existed to put sound and music onto the film, well...there was little use for musical accompaniment. Many of the fine organs feel into silence and neglect, and those that were not dismantled and removed were just left in place and forgotten.
Such was the case of the Baker Grand organ. It remained sitting front-and-center in the orchestra pit at the front of the stage, a mute testament to days gone by and its glory days. During these years of neglect, the pipe chambers were subject to prying individuals, who would sometimes remove one of the smaller, slender metal pipes. I mean, isn't that just the sort of thing that would be appealing to kids let out of stir? These metal rods that could be used for sword fighting, and in calmer moments could be blown into for musical toots!
Because of this, a goodly amount of the smaller metal pipes were removed and lost, and a lot of the remaining ones were badly damaged.
And to add to the insult, the old girl was subjected to having some parts removed from her so that a similar organ down in Baton Rouge could be repaired. The B.G. owner was friendly with the party in Baton Rouge, and- because the organ here was already in bad shape- the out-of-towners were allowed to do the scavenging.
I have no idea what they took. That act took place in about '72. The one who removed the items died just 4 days after I started moving and inquiring about the organ.
The Baker Grand was destined to meet the wrecking ball in '74. Louis Spencer had the salvage and demolition rights. Spencer contacted Mr Bob Shumway to inform him that the building was to be torn down, and that if he wanted the organ, he could have it for a price. Mr Shumway would not meet the price, due to the fact that the organ was in bad shape and was missing a lot of its pipework.I believe Mr Spencer said that he had been "told" that the organ was worth thousands of dollars, and that's what he was looking for, as owner of the salvage rights.
Not able to strike the deal, that was the end of that.
Until about 3 days before the wrecking ball was to swing. Mr Shumway got a call from Mr Spencer saying that if he wanted the organ, to come get it. The price had dropped substantially. And Shumway was interested.
So Mr Shumway made some fast calls, secured a large, long cargo trailer, got his 14 year old son and the 2 employees from his shop and were at the theatre the next day. I believe they started at 8 in the morning and did not get through until 3 the next morning, literally beating the demolition team by about 5 hours.
And so, the organ was put away into storage. Mr Shumway had always wanted to restore the organ, and envisioned building a house that would display it. But time caught up to him-as it does to us all- and his health began to deteriorate, and he never got to put the organ back into working condition.
And so, it sat in storage for 40 years.
Then a few months back, I got a Facebook message from Elwood Black informing me that Ruth Powers-one of the children of Mr Shumway- had posted that if anyone wanted the old Baker Grand organ...COME GET IT!
And so, it has begun.
More stories to come.
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